


The Buzzer Rings

by justdoityoufucker



Category: Franken Fran, ワンパンマン | One-Punch Man
Genre: Developing Friendships, Gen, Police Procedural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:41:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23954770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justdoityoufucker/pseuds/justdoityoufucker
Summary: Rumiko was off-shift and sleeping at three in the morning when her pager beeped and her phone started ringing, one right after the other. She managed to get out of her bed—without falling out of it—and grabbed first her phone, then the pager.
Kudos: 1





	The Buzzer Rings

**Author's Note:**

> reupload of a previously posted fic.

Rumiko was off-shift and sleeping at three in the morning when her pager beeped and her phone started ringing, one right after the other. She managed to get out of her bed—without falling out of it—and grabbed first her phone, then the pager.

“Kuhou,” she said, holding her phone to her ear with her shoulder while she checked her pager. It blinked three letters at her. 301. “Oh, Tetsuo-kun—what? Yes, a 301?”

She listened, nodded, and climbed off her bed, “I’ll be at the precinct in ten minutes. Did you call the sergeant?” she listened and affirmed, “Okay, I’ll be there.”

It was in a flurry that she pulled clothes on—not her police blues, but a thick pair of jeans and a sweater and some boots. A 301 meant trouble at the precinct, and as she strapped on her shoulder holster she wished, desperately, that it wouldn’t be something major.

-

She was glad she had clipped her badge onto her jacket, because if she had it in hand when she slid to a stop in front of the large stone building that she worked in, she would have dropped it.

Half of the building had collapsed, leaving the public with a lovely view of the second floor women’s restroom and the messy tables belonging to special victims and sex crimes on the third floor. Tetsuo, her junior, was standing with a similarly bewildered crowd of secretaries and officers outside of the main entrance, which was covered in rubble.

“What happened?” Rumiko sputtered, pushing her glasses up and staring at the building as she joined them.

“Ah, Rumiko-senpai,” Tetsuo said, somewhat weakly, “It was a giant kappa. You just missed it.”

-

Their first order of business was getting all of the important stuff out of the basement, because the water had broken and was slowly filling up the paper archives they kept, and the shooting range. There weren’t a lot of things that needed to be pulled out of the basement, though—most of their work was done digitally, anyway, and they’d lost a whole bunch of the archive to the 51st precinct a few years before.

“I swear,” her partner, Sousuke, was grunting as he accepted boxes and passed them on to Rumiko, who was passing them on down the line, “if this results in us finally getting a new building I will not complain, but—you can fucking quote me on this—if they re-build it like they did after the earthquake and that giant man stepped on it last year I will find the commissioners and set them on fire.”

Rumiko was definitely empathetic. The building was mazelike, cold in the winter and boiling hot in the summer, and the windows were prone to popping out of their casings. There was also a rumor that the second floor was haunted, but Rumiko didn’t believe that.

“I’d help you,” she added after a moment’s thought and another box hefted, “but I’m fairly sure the sergeant would kill me if I did.”

“Miss Kuhou, you have a bright future ahead of you!” Tetsuo said in a mock-growl, trying to imitate the forty years of smoking that deepened their superior’s voice, “Don’t go getting into trouble.”

“God, you sound just like him,” Rumiko muttered, hefting the last box down the line.

-

The documents had gone to the 51st and they had all cleared their desks by the time their Sergeant, Kisuke Momomiya, appeared, looking like something had bit him on the ass.

“Right, we’re heading over to the 49th,” he bellowed, “they have some space to take us while they build a new place for us.”

-

Tetsuo got smashed in celebration when they went to the bar after that. Rumiko couldn’t blame him, but she had the benefit of experience on her side. Knowing how disasters went, it was just as likely that the 49th would be destroyed the next day.

Sousuke was approaching his drinks from the same place of caution, as did Ayaka, the woman who rounded out their four-block of desks in violent crimes.

“You know,” Sousuke said to the group as they watched their okonomiyaki fry in front of them, “we’re going to have to hit pavement tomorrow—there’s no knowing how much of our crime scenes are left after the attacks last night.”

Rumiko looked up from her phone, where she was checking that exact thing, “They didn’t get past the park, so the house should be fine. The kappa did go by the apartment building, though.”

“Man, the superheroes are thrilled to help when it’s monsters or supervillains,” Ayaka sighed, swigging her beer, “but as soon as it comes to human on human crime they just leave us to fend for ourselves.”

They all sighed at that, Tetsuo groaned, and Sousuke flipped the okonomiyaki over one by one.

-

The apartment building was fine, through some miracle, and Ayaka and Tetsuo went over it the final time before it was to be cleaned and sold.

The house, though it had been out of the kappa’s way, posed a problem of its own. Mainly, it was haunted, not by the family that had been killed in it, but by a very old woman who only remembered it being an inn.

She followed Rumiko from room to room as the woman took pictures—more pictures, the responding team had taken several thousand when they had gotten on scene.

“Hey,” she said to Sousuke as the ghost followed her into the living room, where not a bit of the room was in disarray other than a large bloodstain on the carpet, right next to the fireplace’s hearth, “We should head back. Talk to Ayaka.”

He nodded. “She may have something.”

-

The fingerprints that Ayaka had found were being run while they took dinner—yakisoba delivery. It was strange ordering to a different precinct but their usual driver had no difficulty finding it.

Rumiko all but inhaled hers, looking through the pictures that had been taken of both crime scenes and answering questions automatically when Sousuke asked them of her. The table and room they had been given were small and cramped, what with four of them, but they still had managed to find a whiteboard and roll it in. Sousuke and Tetsuo were filling information out on it, and Ayaka had a map of the city in front of her, red dots marking their crime scenes.

Even though they were all but alone on the floor—where most of their precinct was currently housed—the door was shut, and when it began rattling Tetsuo cautiously asked, “Should we be worried.”

They stared at each other for a moment, Ayaka shrugged, and Sousuke went to open the door.

-

The fur-encased woman was not amused by the small quarters of the room, nor by the burbling coffee percolator or the ashtrays that were still somewhat smoldering.

“You don’t have the files?” she was asking, and Rumiko felt so, so done with the day. They were supposed to have gotten off shift an hour before, and the other violent crimes people had been there for two.

“No, we don’t. The 48th was partially torn down by a kappa two days ago and completely torn down yesterday morning,” Rumiko butted in, “They are currently in storage at the 51st, and not available for public access yet. And they probably won’t be, for another couple weeks.”

The woman looked between all of them, and her brow furrowed farther.

-

Rumiko was the last to leave, yawning as she waved the third shift goodbye. The 49th was quite a walk from her apartment, and the trains weren’t running anymore.

She bundled against the chill of the night air and stepped out, full of conviction to walk home, get some tea and maybe dessert, and go to bed. All of those things fell out of her mind when she came face-to-face with the woman in the outlandish fur coat.

Rumiko was too tired to fathom what the woman wanted. She looked…vaguely familiar, as if maybe she was on TV or something, but Rumiko at that point did not trust her memory.

“I’m sorry,” she said, sounding sort of stiff, “I didn’t mean to just—barge in like that. We hadn’t been notified that your precinct had been forced to stay here after the demon-level earlier this week.”

“Well, we weren’t notified until it happened two days ago, so I don’t blame you,” Rumiko slowly blinked at her. Maybe—“Are you, uh, what is it, the Blizzard of Hell?”

The woman stiffened a little more. She didn’t say anything.

Rumiko clicked her tongue, tucked her hands a little further into her pockets. This was going nowhere and was also pointless, “Sorry we couldn’t help you. I’d check with the commissioner’s office for news.”

-

After two days of running on coffee and takeout, they got a break. Well, more accurately they got more victims, but more victims sadly meant more clues. The last serial murderer in the city (and surrounding area for fifty miles, at that) had gone to the gas chamber with over fifty victims under his belt. As Rumiko got back from the crime scene with her gloves stripped off and a preliminary report in her hands, she hoped with nausea roiling in her stomach they wouldn’t have to see their own victim count raise that high.

-

The next morning she woke to find a drone outside of her front door carrying a sealed envelope that was dumped as soon as she opened the door. It flew off and she watched it with bleary eyes, yawning.

Rumiko poured herself coffee and started pancakes, waiting until they were cooking on the griddle before she opened the envelope. It was blank, which unnerved her—as did its arrival method. Well, the envelope was blank, but the folded paper she drew out of it was thick and official, and if she wasn’t hallucinating, it smelled faintly of jasmine.

“Hmm, Hero’s…Association?” she flipped the pancakes to cook on the other side before reading to herself, out loud, “Detective Kahou, thank you once again for your, oh, she already told me that, sorry again, blah blah.” Rumiko paused at the last paragraph, “I have talked to commissioner’s council and they agreed to give me access to the documents I require in two days’ time, at your supervision. As the primary active detective on those cases, I was hoping you would understand my need to review them.”

She squinted off into the distance, removed the pancakes and set them on her plate. “Why does she need _my_ supervision?” Rumiko asked herself.

-

The 49th was chaos and mayhem by the time she arrived with her to-go cup of coffee and a pre-emptive headache.

Sousuke moved some of his papers off of her desk as she slid into her chair, stubbed his cigarette out and said, “Fingerprint is done—both scenes match, but they’re still running them through the system and haven’t found any matches so far.”

Rumiko nodded, and got to work.

-

She had forgotten about the letter that she had received from the Hero’s Association (or, more accurately, Fubuki), until the woman herself appeared outside of the hovel Rumiko her colleagues were entrenched in.

To everyone’s surprise—everyone being the entirety of violent crimes, half of special victims and sex crimes, and every single patrol officer who was on the floor getting ready to leave—she wasn’t followed by her harem or wearing the fur coat. She had on pants and a well-cut pea coat on, clothes more suited to the weather outside. The heels, though, remained.

“Kuhou-san?” she inquired when made it to the room they were tucked away in. Sousuke lit a new cigarette and lightly punched Rumiko in the shoulder. She’d been staring at the pictures again, trying to find a pattern or _something_ in the crime scenes.

“Ah, uh, Fubuki-san,” she almost fell off her chair when she pushed it back, and the reason that the other woman was there was suddenly very apparent to her when she remembered the letter. “Oh, crap, that’s right, I need to go to the 51st with you.”

-

There were a couple of people in the massive archives room, and one of the two people at the front desk, the lady who had checked them in, brought them the boxes that Fubuki needed.

“So, uh,” Rumiko dug the contents out, guessing what the other woman would need, “why do you need to look at these?”

Fubuki crossed her arms and stared at the overview folders that Rumiko had piled in front of her. “There have been some recent attacks that are very similar to the ones that you were on the investigation, but in another city.”

-

Fubuki didn’t talk at all, just used her psychic powers to skim through all of the documents that Rumiko had piled before neatly piling them back into their respective boxes.

“Thank you,” she said, when they were on their way out of the station. “It will help, once I get the information to my sister.”

An image of the short one with the curly hair came to mind, and Rumiko held back a snort.

“Please, let me treat you to coffee or something,” Fubuki pleaded—and, she did plead, which was odd but Rumiko didn’t mind.

They went to the nearest café. After they had ordered, Rumiko sat, and Fubuki asked, something like confusion in her voice, “So was everyone on the floor helping you guys? Last time it was just the four of you.”

Inwardly groaning at how little the general public knew about the police (well, were superheroes the general public? She didn’t rightly know.) Rumiko shook her head, said, “Just the four of us are on a case. We’re part of the violent crimes division, so we handle murders and the like. There was also the sex crimes unit, part of patrol, uh, a couple of the drugs investigators, and the special victims unit on the floor.”

“I’m sorry,” Fubuki said, and she sat, looking at Rumiko with genuine interest across her face, “I didn’t know that the police force was split in such a way.”

Rumiko gave her a smile that she hoped was encouraging, “It can be a little confusing at times.”

“Tell me, though,” Fubuki remained looking at the other woman, “What is being a police officer like?”

-

“What happened to the 50th precinct?” Fubuki asked her when they ran into each other at the coffee shop again. Rumiko almost believed that the tangential way they ran into each other was not coincidence at that point.

“Ghosts,” Rumiko said, and Fubuki walked with her toward the 49th, taking the two blocks slowly as they talked.

“Ghosts?”

“Well, the 50 was known for dealing with violent crimes specifically before it was divided into the 53rd and 54th,” Rumiko explained, “there were rumors—at least, when I had just started—that the building was haunted by the victims of all of the cold cases they had, which was a _lot_. There were also rumors that it was haunted by a crazy ghost who would capture officers in the middle of the night and perform strange surgeries on them,” she didn’t know why, but she shuddered as she relayed that, “Nobody really knows, though.”

She started when she glanced at Fubuki, because the other woman was staring at her with her green eyes intent. “They abandoned a station because of ghosts?” she asked again, sounding completely disbelieving.

Rumiko gives up, shrugs, “Well, that’s what I heard. Believe it if you will, but at least to violent crimes, there are always ghosts.”

-

They went as an office when the sirens rang to tell the city that monsters have come, yet again. It’s nice having the same shelter as they did at the 48th, because that way that actually know where the hell they are going.

The usual wait in the shelter was boring, but not particularly long. And not interrupted by any sudden holes in the shelter, which was nice.

Rumiko distantly wondered if Fubuki was out there, fighting the monsters in the streets, and if she was okay.

-

Rumiko felt nothing other than blissful relief when they moved into the new building. She’d forgotten what it was like to have an actual desk instead of a large table divided by paperwork and personal effects, to not be penned in by every other department.

They even had their own set of whiteboards, upon which were pinned the intricate web of a map that Ayaka made and the victim photos.

If anything, it was motivating to look up and see the faces of the people who died because they were taking too long.

-

Fubuki ran into her at the coffee shop near the new building, in her dress and heels and a long trench coat of pure black. “You know,” she said, when she paid for both of their coffees and replaced her sunglasses, “maybe we should come up with a schedule.”

“Maybe we should cut the bullshit and you should just give me your phone number or something,” Rumiko said mildly in reply.

Fubuki was blushing high in her cheeks, but she gave over her phone without comment.

-

_Do you think there are alternate universes?_ She texted Fubuki one day on a whim.

_Too busy thinking about this universe_ , was Fubuki’s reply. _What the hell sort of bender are you on?_

Sousuke was smirking when he leaned over to swipe his pack of cigs off of Ayaka’s desk and heard the two chimes. Rumiko ignored him, ignored her red ears and typed back, _I dunno, sometimes I have weird dreams where I’m a cop but not here. And there’s this crazy lady who constantly experiments on humans and I can never get away from her._

_That’s dreams, though_ Rumiko had to smile, because she definitely can hear the other woman saying that.

_Well I’ve never been shot but from those dreams I sure as hell know what being shot feels like_ , she replied after another hour, because she has had actual work she needs to do.

_And stabbed that one time. And cloned_

_The clones hunted a girl who was constantly cloning herself? I think_

_Oh! And there was a weird human thing that could turn into a wolf-human thing?_

_I think in that dream I underwent mitosis there were thousands of me_

Fubuki, to her credit, didn’t try to argue anymore, instead turned to the more innocuous topic of the weather.

-

She felt more than just relief when they catch their killer. She felt—she felt free once there was a signed confession and he was in jail with his lawyer muttering to him. Of course there was all sort of court pomp and circumstance to prepare for, but there were no new cases they have to worry about (surprisingly) and once Momomiya had all the paperwork he sent the four of them home at three in the afternoon.

With their pagers on.

-

The pager and her phone were not the ones that woke her. They were quiet and calm and didn’t need her attention. It was the ringing of her doorbell that woke her, and when she finally rolled out of bed she checked the clock and—

“God damn it,” she slurred, found a sweater to put on over her stretched-out crop top and sleeping shorts.

The doorbell doesn’t stop ringing, and she yawns, clicks the alarm on her clock off and oozes down the hall. 4:30. Not an actual _decent_ time to be up.

She doesn’t bother checking to see who it is, calls, “I’m coming, I’m coming,” as she slips her slippers on and unlocks the door.

Fubuki was standing there, her dress half burnt and her fur coat gone. She had a bottle of champagne in one hand, and her shoes were hanging in the other. “Congratulations, I heard you got your killer,” she said, thrusted the bottle into Rumiko’s hands.

-

Fubuki passed out on the couch after two glasses of bubbly. Rumiko didn’t even drink one, but she fell asleep on the floor after collecting a blanket for each of them.

Only after she had woken up and gone to the kitchen to start the coffee pot did she realize that she didn’t have any grounds anywhere in the apartment. She had meant to buy some before going to work.

Rumiko pulled on some clothes before she went back into the living room, paused, and gently shook Fubuki’s shoulder. The woman shot up and nearly smashed their heads together before she got her bearings and her eyes fell on Rumiko.

“I have work and there’s no coffee here,” Rumiko said, rubbing her eyes. Despite all of the sleep she still felt tired, “If you want, we could go get some before I have to go to the station.”

Nodding absentmindedly, the woman straightened her dress, looked dismayed at the shortened hem courtesy of it being burned. “Do you have, uh,” her voice trailed off as she rubbed a hand through her uneven hair.

“I have a coat you can borrow,” Rumiko said, pointed to it as it was draped over the back of the couch.

Fubuki muttered her thanks, and they left the apartment.

-

The café was warm and nearly empty. It was only six, though. Fubuki was yawning. Rumiko felt fine, felt awake enough to face the day.

“’m sorry for stopping by and in the middle of the night,” Fubuki said when they were on their way again, coffee in hand, “I think it was the adrenaline.”

“Mm, it’s okay,” Rumiko shrugged, “if anything, you make life much more interesting.” She paused, watched Fubuki struggling to keep pace with her and slowed, “and tiring.”

“I think,” Fubuki said, slinging an arm over the other woman’s shoulders, “the feeling is mutual.”


End file.
